7) “By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.

--Duff Wilson, New York Times, August 25, 2006. Attorney General Roy Cooper himself would later give the lie to these sentences, when he remarked that no credible evidence existed of any crime, much less sufficient evidence to take a case to a jury.

6) “DNA results can often be helpful, but, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and most of the years I’ve been doing this, we didn’t have DNA. We had to deal with sexual assault cases the good old-fashioned way.”

--DA Mike Nifong, at the April 11, 2006 NCCU forum, dismissing the DNA results that his office a mere three weeks previously had promised would exonerate the innocent.

5) “Is this drive to register as putative, enfranchised citizens of the good city of Durham, this drive to impact the Durham political [process], driven by innocence, one wonders—the most widespread mobilization of the Duke campus since the campaign against Nike sweatshop labor. To vote against Mike Nifong. To make the oldest “X,” the sign of the white male franchise, itself overridden with the mark of privilege, oppression, slavery, racism, utter contempt for black and native bodies. [emphasis added] To make that sign in the history of this country, to extend into the presence the deeply troubled past, to make the “X”—whether it is acknowledged as such or not—against women and, more specifically, against black female bodies. All that, one presumes, all that written into the “X” to ensure that the secret is kept secret, that the secret is kept in-house, where it belongs.”

--Group of 88 stalwart Grant Farred, articulating the thesis of his Herald-Sun op-ed, in which he accused all Duke students who registered to vote in Durham of harboring a “secret racism.” Farred recently left Duke for a tenured, full professorship at Cornell. Stated English Department chair Molly Hite, author of Class Porn, “We are very enthusiastic about Professor Farred, whose work everyone in this department has long admired.”

4.) “I think something happened in that bathroom.”

--DA Mike Nifong, asked by Lane Williamson for his theory of the crime, June 2007

--Group of 88 stalwart Karla Holloway, offering her insights on the lacrosse case. In the fall 2007 semester, Holloway is offering a class at Duke Law School.

2.) “If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn’t do it, whatever they did is bad enough.”

--Richard Brodhead, April 20, 2006, to Durham Chamber of Commerce, in his first public appearance after the arrests of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. We know now “whatever” Finnerty and Seligmann did: they attended a party they played no role in organizing and they drank some beer.

1.) “I mean, if I were one of those [defense] attorneys, I wouldn’t really want to try a case against me either.”

KC After Nifong, the duffer is the worse. Add Harris Johnson's (he is in the picture with Victoria at LD) quote at the election "We showed that we don't want those white boys from the North. coming down here and telling us what to do." paraphrasing - Envoking the image of the three murdered Freedom Fighters.

Re 12:11, No, they are not insane. They are vile, vicious malignancies. Evil is probably the most correct tag for them. And they're spreading from Duke, to Vanderbilt and Cornell, with accolades and professional lifetime sinecures.

"White innocence means black guilt. Men's innocence means women's guilt." Any of my high school English teachers would have told me to be more specific had I emitted a generalization like that. Had Holloway done so, she could have made a statement which was actually correct: "If the accused students are innocent, then Crystal Mangum is guilty."

Sadly a daunting task sorting through ALL of the garbage rendered via the DPD, PC Duke freakshows, loopy left media hacks, Nifong, ETC... but sure enough KC delivers a fitting #1 quote...as always nicely done. Maybe a ranking of the biggest villians of the case....may have to keep the blog going through 2009 though

Nifong is a clown. The more inexcusable are Grant Farred, Karla Holloway and, of course, Broadhead, each of whom come off as nutcases in these quotes.

They are to be mocked, ridiculed, reviled; students who attend their colleges should post "(Un)Wanted" posters with their mugs plastered on them, and your sons should be warned that these blowhards are part of a lynch mob that wants to destroy them, castrate them, humiliate them as "payback" for things none of them experienced and none of your sons played any part in.

Parents need to stop enabling these morons to hurt your sons by refusing to pay that hefty tuition. Get your boys the hell out of those terrible, terrible places.

A seemingly ignored villain of the case. Christina Headrick, who now runs the craft/scrapbook store Carolina Memories in Durham (http://www.carolinamemories.com). Who would guess that the owner of such a seemingly benevolent harmless establishment would have another side: If you visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DurhamResponds-discuss/ you will find the most vicious potbanging posts from this woman, as well as post #34 (march 29, 2006) where she lists the names and hometowns of all the lacrosse team members (and calls them cowards). What kind of mentality does it take to post home addresses like that? To expose individuals to every psychopath in Durham and elsewhere, and also endanger their families, younger brothers and sisters, even pets? Rather cowardly herself, Christina Headrick made a quick exit from the Group when DNA started destroying her case (no apologies). But am I the only one believing a civil suit directly against her (or at least a potbanging protest outside Carolina Memories) would be karmic just desserts?

To me, it's the quotes Brodhead did NOT give which did worse damage than the bellowings Nifong gave in front of the cameras. At least Nifong's noise warned you he was the enemy - but Brodhead's silence prevented that warning.

The silence of Brodhead did horrific damage - his silence in NOT praising Pressler, not demanding due process, not chastising the Gang for its attack on their students, etc. This silence ate like cancer at justice, honor and hope.

What Broadhead did say was bad enough - but it was what he did NOT say that was the worst of all.

the lax case and jena (not to mention the rape of the white woman at the black fraternity at duke) provide important insight into the state of race relations today.

This will be heresy to this board, but Jena is much more disturbing to me than lax. At least with the LAX case, the black community could claim that they believe CGM despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Believing CGM would certainly call into question one's ability to analyze the facts of a situation, but at least you understand the result based on the faulty analysis.

Jena is much worse. The view here is that it is perfectly acceptable for six people to batter one person if that person is white. Have you ever seen Jesse and Al show up where both victim and perpetrator are of the same race? The complaint of the "civil rights" organizations is completely empty because the prosecutor must prove each and every element of the charge. If he doesn't then the defendants will not be found guilty. This is exactly what happened to the first. he was tried for attempted murder but found guilty of a lesser charge.

I have to say that I take my hat off to the black community and the civil rights organizations. They have cleverly transitioned from organizations that sought equal treatment to those that seek to advance an agenda without the slightest hinderance of justice. And they have done it with the assistance of white liberals (often who are very wealthy) who's rights and lives they seek to trample.

You can't blame the black community. They are only trying to "get theirs" as they say. But you must hold in very low regard other people who will not speak up for their own interests and certainly not when their own are begin falsely charged and beaten senseless by a gang.

So many quotable moments...So much sadness...So many idiots! Thankfully for Collin, Reade, and Dave, this part of their nightmare is over. Hepofully, the shame of many of those listed here will come to the forefront and everyone will come to realize that the only crime committed here was against the three classy young men not by them. KC, it's a shame you don't have music on your blog. If so, you could take over Bob Hope's theme song because we all say "Thanks for the Memories" every time we think about the end of DIW.

Great list K.C. With such a target rich environment, it would be difficult to miss.

I waited til the end to see that my favorite didn't make it. It was early in the "settings" when the defense attorneys were trying to get Nifong to preserve the data on the false accuser's cell phone. Nifong stood up in open court and stated something to the effect of:

"I don't know why counsel for the defense would think there was anything of evidentiary value on that cell phone..."

KC Your post has either been my last read before bed or first read before breakfast. You have become my friend and I will miss your blog. I wish you well on your new position. I too will look for your other publications. Thank you for sharing your integrity.

The irony of the #1 statement, is how laughably and totally WRONG Nifong was about this -- if the case went to trial, the defense WANTED to try the case against Nifong, only Nifong, and nobody else but Nifong.

Think about it -- it's pretty obvious. The whole defense is based on Nifong (well, and a little thing called the Truth).

"So, Sgt. Gottlieb, who was it that told you to conduct that lineup, in a way that you knew was in violation of federal, State and local guidelines?"

You'd definitely want him there in Court -- as an object of scorn and derision, and so that the jury could find the defendants guilty only by agreeing with that scumbag, right over there at that table -- Mr. Nifong.

Every time I read or hear comments from any of the G88, I am stunned at their superficiality and intellectual vacuity. Don't the REAL professors see this? And, if so, why is KC one of the few who has the integrity to call them out? There was a time when I thought all college and university professors were intellectual giants whose mission was to bring enlightenment to others. That mission has devolved into a slick and sickening con job judging by what I see at Duke and most other "institutes of higher education." It's even more obvious than the Emperor's New Clothes. Grant, Houston, Lubiano, and their ilk are puss-filled boils on the arse of academia.

Mike Nifong may have been right in Durham. He was arrogant but when you have a backdrop of judges in your pocket and a community that will lynch the innocent, perhaps he was correct. I'm glad we never found out.

I still would like to add "Poultry" in there somewhere. Perhaps a graphic of a small chicken.

You just must be willfully stupid KC, or intentionally misleading. Here is what Holloway wrote. Easily available to anyone who wants to read something other than your misrepresentations. But I guess the facts do not serve your purpose. Is this how you did the rest of your research?

"In nearly every social context that emerged following the team's crude conduct, innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender. White innocence means black guilt. Men's innocence means women's guilt. These capacious categories, which were in absolute play the night of the team's drunken debacle, continue their hold on the campus and the Durham community."

Sharpton and Jackson are trying to fan the flames of racial hatred. The media wants to try a criminal case in the press, according to the rules of PC.

Apparently, nobody learned a thing.

I don't really know what is going on in Jena, but I do know that anything Sharpton and Jackson touch stinks. I don't have a pre-conceived notion of what the outcome of the criminal charges should be in Jena.

But, it looks to me like the press learned absolutely nothing from the Duke case.

"There’s no question there’s ...ethnic hatreds. But when those ...ethnic hatreds are fueled by _________ policy of hostility, then you make the situation worse.”

This very well could be written about the Duke faculty, administration, and leadership in Durham. I include ALL faculty because it appears scant little is being said/done in the totalitarian academic environment to enact reform.

What was the quote actually referring to? Iraq.

The speaker was Presidential candidate Bill Richardson. He was speaking of "American" hostility.

Really.

One wonders what would happen if the US actually became hostile and imperialistic as projected in the meta-narrative(s).

If one inserts Duke into the quote the hostile environment leads to a an assault on truth and justice.

Ironically this appeared on the same day that a Khmer Rouge leader was arrested and put on trial for genocide.

The delayed justice for Khmer Rouge genocide becomes a gentle reminder that few will forget the deplorable actions/inactions of the Klan of 88, administrators, media, and abettors.

Makes us realize that the useful idiots in Durham really are amateurs.

“President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to take over any private schools refusing to submit to the oversight of his socialist government, a move some Venezuelans fear will impose leftist ideology in the classroom.”

It would have been nice to see some of Irving Joyner's observations on the case. I especially enjoyed his comment that "Just because the defense is slam-dunking during warm-ups, doesn't mean a thing when the game starts." Sorry, Irv, it's not a good idea to use basketball witticisms against Duke. We're the experts here.

By the way, KC, it turns out that special collections at Duke library maintains very extensive records on the history of the university. Guess what, they are going to include a copy of this entire blog as part of that history. So while Baghdad Bob Burness has indicated that you only present one version of events, that version will be available for researchers at the university for years to come. Congratulations!

1.) “I mean, if I were one of those [defense] attorneys, I wouldn’t really want to try a case against me either.”

In Durham with judge Hudson hearing the case? I wouldn't want to either. He'd win it "the old fashioned way," by telling obvious lies, breaking all the rules, poisoning the jury pool, and having the judge back him every step of the way.

The only thing wrong with this statement is that Nifong slightly overestimated the strength and reach of the Durham/North Carolina system of corruption. And only slightly. Remember, the Bar intervention came within one vote of not happening.

"And they're spreading from Duke, to Vanderbilt and Cornell, with accolades and professional lifetime sinecures."

True enough, but Vanderbilt, and to a greater extent, Cornell, were consumed with this PC-mindset long before Baker and Farred, respectively, joined their faculties.

The nonsense infects every corner of education from pre-school through graduate school. It has already reached critical mass in the liberal arts. Don't believe the hard sciences are immune.

That humans are completely responsible for global warming and switching to hybrid cars and using flourescent lightbulbs will make a difference is even a topic of discussion (after millions of years of temperature variations, some of them even ocurring before the internal combustion engine was invented) indicates that any day now, someone is going to declare that "e" does not equal "mc squared" and that Newton's ideas about gravity were really the result of the white man's domination of dark-skinned men and women of every description.

Think it can't happen? Fifty years ago, people would have laughed off people like Farred, Neal, Holloway, and Rudy. Now they get lifetime employment at elite institutions of higher "education."

"But, it looks to me like the press learned absolutely nothing from the Duke case."

On the contrary, they learned that they can push the agenda and label every dissenter a right-winger and racist. It is all about left-wing PC narrative. Also, white democratic politicians, e.g. the one from NYC (who want to get elected by racist AA thugs) are there in Jena marching for the "civil rights".

I think Nifong's statement about not needing an attorney (#18) should be #1, or at least top-10.But that's just IMO.

That having been said, it's apparent that Lane Williamson gave Nifong the opportunity to back up his boast about not wanting to try a case against Mikey. He tried a case against Mikey and he kicked Mikey's butt.

Does anyone remember the sock-puppet known as "Ollie?" (Kukla, Fran and Ollie?) The one Nifong resembles in the infamous chokehold-pose?

1. KC: what a great way to wrap the list. With each succeeding entry, the steam in my boiler kept building up pressure. But when it came to number one, instead of exploding, I doubled over and released it all safely. "LMAO" does not begin to describe it.

This case was a joke. Nifong was a clown. All thinking people should have treated it this way, beginning about 4/15/2006. Instead, since then, people like you have had to drag people to what should have been obvious from the beginning.

2. KC has done a masterpiece of scholarship. Ironically, his chances of being hired at a place like Duke, Cornell, Vanderbilt have been damaged by his research. The people he critizes are still much more marketable, even after the exposure. American higher education, 2007..

WINDBAG said at 5:44 ... the lax case and jena (not to mention the rape of the white woman at the black fraternity at duke) provide important insight into the state of race relations today.

This will be heresy to this board, but Jena is much more disturbing to me than lax. At least with the LAX case, the black community could claim that they believe CGM despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Believing CGM would certainly call into question one's ability to analyze the facts of a situation, but at least you understand the result based on the faulty analysis.

Jena is much worse. The view here is that it is perfectly acceptable for six people to batter one person if that person is white....

As I just said on yesterday's comment section, it seems that for blacks and their PC allies, beating up whites is the civil right of the new millenium.

Also, in your first paragraph, you forgot the Chris Collins rape of the 12-year-old white girl. Oh wait, I have to remember the presumption of innocence, even though his DNA was found inside her. Maybe raping redneck girls is another of the new civil rights. Certainly any rednecks who resist or complain will immediately be deemed racist by their economic betters.

I have read the entirety of Holloway's "Coda: Bodies of Evidence" from which KC took the quotes in question. Nowhere in there can I see any indication that KC is misreading or misrepresenting the point of those quotes.

Just keep voting for democratic party and this PC wonderland stuff keep going on.

Members of Hamas, Hezbollah, Black Panthers and Iranian giverment are welcomed by Ivu League, but people like Larry Summers (moderate democrat) or republicans are either denied entry or physically attacked at Ivu League.

"Grant, Houston, Lubiano, and their ilk" are the conscience of the new academy. Ask Larry Summers.

We get occasional professors here who talk a good game, who talk big about standing up to the Grants, the Houstons, and the Lubianos, but they are usually anonymous, which tells you more than their words do.

no justice no peace says...The delayed justice for Khmer Rouge genocide becomes a gentle reminder that few will forget the deplorable actions/inactions of the Klan of 88, administrators, media, and abettors.

Makes us realize that the useful idiots in Durham really are amateurs.

9/21/07 8:45 AM

Excellent post, though in light of the ongoing war against jihad, instead of "useful idiots", I would call them "useful infidels".

If anyone has followed the Jena 6 news, you will know that now the Feds and House Judiciary committee are falling over themselves to investigate this case. Keep in mind that an actual crime did occur here. The victim was badly beaten by the Jena 6 youths until he was unconscious.

Why the Federal attention over the prosecution of a legitimate and serious crime here versus the clearly false accusation of the Duke players?

More and more I am seeing "diversity" as a means to allow minorities to physically and verbally attack whites without any consequnces what-so-ever. Take the comment by Jesse Jackson about Obama being "too white." No one gave it a second thought yet it was a far worse racial comment than Don Imus made.

An exotic dancer’s accusation that Duke University lacrosse players raped her at a March 14 off-campus party continues to polarize Durham, Raleigh, and the Duke community. Those accused were white; the victim was black. Citing the racial overtones, both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton joined the fray. For several days, protests rocked the Durham campus. On March 25, Duke University President Richard Brodhead issued a statement declaring, “Physical coercion and sexual assault are unacceptable in any setting and have no place at Duke.” Of course, he issued the caveat, “People are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” but on campuses today, such presumption is secondary. On April 5, Brodhead canceled the lacrosse team’s season and promised an investigation of the culture of college athletes as well as Duke’s own response. The lacrosse coach resigned.

Months later, more is known about the incident. While District Attorney Mike Nifong is pressing on with charges of rape and related accusations against three lacrosse players, his case is unraveling. Photos, witnesses, alibis, inconclusive DNA evidence, and even passed polygraphs make his case increasingly tenuous.

Unfortunately, it is not the first time that Brodhead has allowed public relations to trump principle. Prior to assuming the presidency of Duke, Brodhead was dean of Yale College. He was a popular teacher and, at least for the first half of his tenure as dean, a well-liked administrator as well. Then tragedy struck. On December 4, 1998, senior Suzanne Jovin was found stabbed to death and left at an intersection in a neighborhood adjacent to the Yale campus which housed many Yale professors and graduate students.

Many universities are shy about adverse publicity. At Yale, it’s an obsession. My freshman year, lacrosse player Christian Prince was shot and killed on the steps of a church, a couple dozen yards from a student dormitory. He was white; his alleged assailant was black. It was Yale’s worst nightmare. Parents and applicants peppered admissions officers and tour guides with questions about New Haven safety. The Damocles’ sword of incitement and town-gown racial tension hung over Yale’s administrators.

When Jovin was murdered, justice took a backseat to damage control. Within days New Haven police and Yale officials publicly fingered political scientist James Van de Velde, Jovin’s senior essay adviser. He was a star lecturer and had been a residential college dean. He was also a former White House appointee under George H. W. Bush and a member of the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserves. Most Yale professors lean to the left of the student body; few in the political-science and international-relations departments have real-world experience. Van de Velde was the subject of personal jealousy and political animosity. Many faculty members—including Brodhead—looked askance at his desire to emphasize practical policymaking over theory. Some questioned, for example, his willingness to help Jovin write—in 1998—about the threat posed by Osama bin Laden to the U.S. to be unscholarly. From an academic point-of-view, Van de Velde was a black sheep.

Yale administrators did not care that there was neither evidence nor motive linking Van de Velde to Jovin. Her body had been found a half-mile from his house. Just as at Duke, Brodhead spoke eloquently about the principles of due process, but moved to subvert it. Citing the New Haven Police Department’s naming of Van de Velde among “a pool of suspects,” Brodhead cancelled Van de Velde’s spring-term lecture, explaining that “the cancellation of the course doesn’t follow from a judgment or a prejudgment of his hypothetical involvement in the Jovin case.” As at Duke, Brodhead insisted that due process would prevail. Despite Van de Velde’s stellar student reviews and distinguished record, Brodhead then let his contract lapse. Van de Velde left New Haven, his career in shambles.

Brodhead’s willingness to offer up a sacrificial lamb undercut justice in other ways. Three days after the murder, New Haven police spoke to Van de Velde, but declined his offers to let them search his home, take a DNA sample, or take a polygraph exam (they did dust his car for fingerprints; their findings provided no link).

They did find Jovin’s fingerprints on a plastic soda bottle found at the crime scene. The soda bottle also had someone else’s fingerprints—not Van de Velde’s. But, having a suspect, why process evidence? The Fresca bottle was crucial. She did not have the bottle when last seen alive on the main campus by a fellow student. That was a half hour before she was found dying almost two miles away. That particular brand of soda was sold in only one store on campus. By the time the police visited it—months later—that store’s surveillance tape had been erased. Nevertheless, her likely presence there turned the half-hour timeline upside-down, and raised the probability that her attacker(s) had forced her into a vehicle, attacked her, and then dumped her—not the type of news Yale parents want to hear. Jovin may also have fought off her attacker. Subsequent tests of material taken from beneath her fingernails revealed DNA that did not match Van de Velde’s, that of her boyfriend, any other friend or acquaintance, or any emergency worker who tried to save her. Neither Yale nor the New Haven police have explained why it took two years to test the scrapings. Nor have they explained why they ignored eyewitness accounts of a tan or brown van seen parked at the crime scene at the time of the crime. Van de Velde drove a red Jeep Wrangler. Brodhead has never apologized. In March 2000, a Yale spokesman dismissed press inquiries saying that more attention to the case “can only hurt Yale” (he would later deny he said it). Public relations trumps justice. Today, Jovin’s murder remains unsolved.

Leadership is not always easy, but it is incumbent upon university presidents to set an example. When university presidents act on principle, they can be subject to withering criticism and attack. The right path is not always easy. If Brodhead recognizes his error in the Jovin case, he should apologize to Van de Velde, its other victim. That he repeats his mistakes—at Yale canceling a class; at Duke, a lacrosse season—does his leadership a disservice. Although just yesterday he agreed to allow a “probationary” reinstatement of the lacrosse team, at Duke, he has affirmed those who, with accusations of racism and adherence to political correctness, demanded premature action. He has treated the accused cavalierly. Justice should take its course. Brodhead need not act until the charges are dismissed or a verdict returned. But, if then, it transpires that he has once again tarred the innocent, he can prove his leadership with an apology or a resignation.

Obviously, 32 is completely insufficient to cover all the vile, evil comments and written statements surrounding this case. It's possible that we could come up with enough of these to release 8 per day for the next year. My take is that KC arbitrarily selected the number to present as 32 so he could wrap up the theme this week and did a good job of ranking them overall.

Perfect? No, for the following reason: people who have been following the progression of this case closely will have their own version of the Top 32, Top 10, # 1, etc. depending on their own viewpoint.

We've already heard from the Chan Hall and Eugene Robinson "fans."

One of my personal favorites, not only for the content, but for the name of the "perpetrator" is the editorial by Lynne DUKE at the WaPo (May 2006): "She was black, they were white, and race and sex were in the air."

One of the major by-products of this case will always be what it has revealed about the quality of many university professors.

I've met a lot of people like the Gang of 88. They're in every town or city with a college campus.

In social settings, I've always gotten along well with such people...simply because social conversations are always light, airy, and meaningless.

But when you get into serous issues and have to listen to the way they think and behave, it's so predictable.

Yet always shocking.

I have a neighbor--a PhD--who is essentially a carbon copy of the Gritty Gang of 88. She's very pleasant and, IMO, much more literate than they; however, when topics turn to politics or race or female/male issues, she becomes rabid.

A lecture will come spewing out and it's obvious the same tape plays in her head every day. She's very dictatorial and constantly tells me how stupid people are in her office on campus....as if she's superior.

One afternoon last year as I was getting out of my car she spent almost an hour telling me that she was race profiled in a Hallmark store....and that the clerk followed her around the store asking if she needed help in finding anything.

This Gang 88-esque neighbor just wouldn't hear that perhaps the clerk really wanted to help her and might have been new on the job and wanted to make a good impression on the boss.

After listening to this crap for what seemed forever, I told my 88-esque neighbor that I knew an excellent attorney and that she should bring a case against the store.

She promptly shut her race-obsessed mouth at that point.

LOL!

Some people have been geared to use race for everything negative that happens and as an excuse even, perhaps, for having a bad day.

I always say hello and exchange courtesies with this woman; however, my respect for her tanked as a result of her strange mentality which mirrors the 88.

This is a great example of what often happens. I had been a very good friend to this woman.....nice holiday gifts....watering her plants for her when she asked when she was traveling...etc.....

...but now I keep my distance because I will not abide such a destructive mentality.

IMO, people like Karla Holloway, Grant Farred, and all the other 88 parasites at Duke have the same effect on those around them who try to be their friends.

I agree that the comments from Chan Hall were outrageous. They should be included.

I wonder what he and people like Cathy Davidson of the Gang of 88 think about Crystal Mangum now.

Both publicly came out with statements calling Mangum a "student at a renowned historically black college working her way through by doing what she had to do....etc.......".....or some such tedious and always predictable "sista" BS.

Do any of these people have any self-respect? Any pride? Any regard for reality?

Another comment that was uttered to me by Greg Childress--a H-S Bob Ashley janissary--last fall was equally troubling.

I called Childress--as I had done many times last year because of their biased coverage of the case--to complain about their horrific editorial on Ed Bradley's 60 Minutes segment.

In the past, I had always had a light and very pleasant relationship with Childress and since he was one of few staff members to remain from the old H-S, I always talked to him first.

He became very irritated by my questions and complaints. I kept asking him who on the staff actually wrote that editorial. LOL!!!

Then he blirted out..."Countless black men from the past have been arrested for crimes they didn't commit. What's such a big deal about some lacrosse players?" !!!!

Then I yelled at him.......asking if he were a professional?.......and how he could use the paper to write such bigoted crap?.......etc......etc......

Then he hung up.

LOL!!!

However, as we all know, the H-S staff still operates using its racist and biased agenda with abandon.

"Why the Federal attention over the prosecution of a legitimate and serious crime here versus the clearly false accusation of the Duke players?"

From the homepage of Anna Mills S. Wagoner, U.S. Atty. for the Middle District of North Carolina:Prior to her appointment as United States Attorney, Mrs. Wagoner served as a District Court Judge in North Carolina.

The fact that Wagoner is a fromer colleague of Orlando Hudson, Marcia Morely, Ron Stephens, Kenneth Titus, Elaine Bushfan and Anthony Brannon may well explain her lack of action.

Remind me again why Abe Lincoln was so hot to keep North Carolina in the Union?

The biggest problem for me, in forming an opinion about the Jena6, is that I have so little faith in what's printed in newspapers anymore. I've read that the white kid was beaten unconscious and I've read that he was at the emergency room for about 3 hours and attended a social function that evening. Heck, I don't even know how anyone can get in and out of an emergency room that fast even if they're in perfect condition!

OT but interesting reminder over at LS that (re the fake lineup/identification) KIM ROBERTS arrived 30 minutes earlier than Crystal and socialized with the boys; KIM ROBERTS was in control of the dance and timing of leaving; KIM ROBERTS was sober enough to get the car and drive to the Kroger; KIM ROBERTS was obviously lucid and clear-headed when she called 911....so KIM ROBERTS was the obvious choice as the only one who could have made positive ID of who was at the party, certainly better than Crystal, but the DPD never asked KIM to do a "lineup." If that doesn't show clear evil intent...

"The view here is that it is perfectly acceptable for six people to batter one person if that person is white."

No it is not! I followed the case (Jena, La) since day one through the local media and couldn't believe the injustice that was going on in this small town of Louisiana. In this case, the punishment does not fit the crime. Bell's mom repeated several times that her son deserves the punishment, but not 15 years for a school fight. That is the point that people are fighting for.

Once again KC, thank you for all you have done to Collin, Reade, and Dave and their families. I wish you the very best in your new position.

I should have mentioned that MIT's president (hired as I was leaving) is a former Yale faculty member and administrator, as was Richard Brodhead. Hockfield's response going foward will be an interesting experiment to detect Yale's culpability in growing craven administrators.

I don't know what to make of the Jena 6. Having read some (presumably) balanced sources on it, it sounds like people being overprosecuted for something they did in a pendular series of semi-racial events at the school.

That's an injustice, but it's not in line with innocent people being targeted and framed. Nor have I seen evidence of a massive conspiracy and related cover-up. I'll never understand the South, though.

Hanging(picture of homosexuals hanged in Iran - not a problem for Columbia U or Ivy League, at least they are not - you know - republicans)

9/21/07 1:43 PM

Liberals today (more accurately: anti-liberals who hijacked the appellation decades ago) would hang all the gays if they thought it would hasten "the final crisis of capitalism" -- which they believe in as fervently as many Christians believe in the Rapture.

Anonymous 1:27 said... ...The biggest problem for me, in forming an opinion about the Jena6, is that I have so little faith in what's printed in newspapers anymore. I've read that the white kid was beaten unconscious and I've read that he was at the emergency room for about 3 hours and attended a social function that evening. Heck, I don't even know how anyone can get in and out of an emergency room that fast even if they're in perfect condition!::Three hours is possible as long as you are not at the ER on Friday or Saturday night...the traditional ER knife and gun club get together.::GP

Jamil Hussein: So true. The Columbia leftists aren't protesting a president whose administration actually executes men for homosexuality. But God forbid a Republican should visit! Shows the demented mentality.

Debrah at 12:40 raises a crucial point. I am not unsympathetic with Dick Brodhead when he got jumped by the mad-dog faculty and was cowed into the anti-lax actions. How, constructively, can we deal with people who act in a confrontational manner, are angry all the time, and are agenda-driven? Peter Lange wrote a reasonable letter to Houston Baker, after Baker's tirade, and promptly got hammered by a bunch of AA True Believers. I think we are really in a pickle. I have no ready answers, and would appreciate input from some of the good thinkers on this forum.

Big difference between drinking some beers and a "team's drinken debacle". As SO many have done in Durham, another misleading statement. Did they drink, yes. Did the captains(2) hire strippers, yes. Not a crime. Who turned out to be drunk one...hum...that would be CGM!!Have the players apologized. Many, many times.

Most of us don't sign our names with an "X." That might be how you sign your paychecks, but not the rest of us. But I guess it's a secret, either way.

BTW, how is Marshall these days, trailing along behind Hale-Bop? How in the world is he gonna get new Nikes, all the way across the solar system? It'll be a long, long time before he can get back to Payless!

BTW-BTW: How is your putative doing these days? (Haven't you had it removed yet?) I'd enfranchise your putative in the science fiction hall of fame, if I were you!

Dear Mikey, When you said "I wouldn't want to try a case against me," were you being literal? How many personalities do you actually keep in that large head of yours? (Shall we call an exorcist of your choosing?)

Many of us are hoping that lots of people "want to try a case" against you! The sooner the better.

Another question to Grant: why wasn't Crystal keeping her "secrets" to herself? I was under the impression that the students didn't really find her "secrets" all that interesting! All this ado, only to find out that the "secret" really wasn't worth knowing!

Xs and kisses, Grant! Tell the folks at the res "hi" for me! Remember, you have to take off your Nikes when you take off your Speedo, too!

haskell said... "How, constructively, can we deal with people who act in a confrontational manner, are angry all the time, and are agenda-driven?"

Constructively for them? You can't.

Constructively for the institution as a whole?Fire them.

Can't fire them because of tenure?Ttake away their committee assignments, take away their funding, take away their parking spaces, give them crappy offices, and assign them to teaching Remedial English.

Instead we see Brodhead giving them increased funding and authority. Whether it's driven by actual agreement with them or just by fear of the Larry Summers treatment, Brodhead's policy of going out of his way to support the nuts is long-standing and consistent.

There's no question that Holloway's prose is difficult to parse easily. But after making a concerted effort, I'm fairly well swayed that she was issuing a lament when she wrote "white innocence means black guilt." She was stating how the attitudes in Durham were at the time, not necessarily how they should be.

The rest of her essay is filled with garbage, but I don't find that line too terrible in context.

KC - do you read this line of Holloway's as a lament, as a plain statement of fact, or as something else? Indeed she could have made the meaning of this line much more clear.

I don't see the Holloway remark as in any way a lament--especially seen as part of an essay in which she attacked the women's lacrosse players.

There was a lament in her essay--when she complained about her own excessive workload.

Michael Gustafson, it seems to me, interpreted the Holloway essay correctly in a nicely done post last fall: it was a polarizing document, one that suggested that racial solidarity could trump pursuit of truth.

...Debrah at 12:40 raises a crucial point. I am not unsympathetic with Dick Brodhead when he got jumped by the mad-dog faculty and was cowed into the anti-lax actions. How, constructively, can we deal with people who act in a confrontational manner, are angry all the time, and are agenda-driven? Peter Lange wrote a reasonable letter to Houston Baker, after Baker's tirade, and promptly got hammered by a bunch of AA True Believers. I think we are really in a pickle. I have no ready answers, and would appreciate input from some of the good thinkers on this forum.::I don't present myself as a good thinker but I do know a little about how to deal with mad-dog faculty members.

You make sure that they students know that you are dealing with mad-dog faculty members.

And like the Eskimos of long ago the students will herd the mad-dog faculty AND staff out to the far end of an iceberg just before the spring thaw...and watch them float off towards the sunset.

Take a little time to read the student columns at the Duke Chronicle this week. They are helping one another get past this mess and they are taking back their wonderful university from the mad-dogs.

They need encouragement from us without us referencing the Duke lacross rape hoax.

Well should also follow Debrah's example, I believe.

Rather than sit back and do nothing, she turned that light of hers on the dilemma so other will know. It works...and causes the ice to melt just a wee bit faster.::GP

Thanks for your response. I agree with the general take of this article by Gustafson and yourself. I suggest everyone read it to fully appreciate its (at times frightening) foolishness.

That said, I've been through the "white innocence means black guilt" portion several dozen times trying to figure out exactly what Holloway was trying to say in that passage. (She doesn't make reading easy.) My take remains different from yours, but I'm not fully convinced of my interpretation.

If the correct context is as you find it, I'd concur that it's one of the most outrageous quotes in the case.

This is a quote from MSNBC.com from this evening's Dan Rather story. If this is a widespread industry principle, why does Duff Wilson, Selena Roberts, et al still have jobs?

'Take, for example, Don Hewitt, the legendary producer of “60 Minutes.” “Any news organization, print or broadcast, has the right to protect its reputation by divesting itself of a reporter, irrespective of who he or she is, who it feels reported as fact something that reflected his or her biases more than the facts bear,” he said in a NEWSWEEK interview'

My Duke Magazine arrived today.Here's a direct quote from Dr. Gustafson, in his letter to the editor on page 7. Regarding the intentionally misread "white innocence" equation, it seems Dr. Gustafson at least has a fair and balanced view of what Holloway wrote:

"Dr. Holloway, in her article, did not herself set forth the equations above but discussed how many in society viewed the case, stating that '...innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender.' ...An important part of that examination [of the myriad complex issues that the last year and more have (re)illuminated] will be to focus on what people actually said or wrote rather than others' interpretations thereof, and so I am glad to have the opportunity to make the clarifications above."Dr. Gustafson also acknowledges in this letter that the wording of [his] weblog on Dr. Lubiano also needed clarification. And he has the courage of character to make that clarification. A courage woefully lacking in the thread today.If Dr. Gustafson has the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the misreading the rest of you insist upon does that make him a ... communist? Or does it point out your failure to bring a similar integrity to your postings--whether you support the left or right of this debate?

This example from his column is pretty much the position taken by the editorial staff to any complaint.

His reference to "bloggers" really makes me sick:

Saunders' column, too, offered a view contrary to the popular sentiment that has swung solidly behind the Duke students since their exoneration in the judicial system. "The Dukies have gone beyond seeking justice," Saunders wrote. "They're being greedy and retributive." That infuriated a lot of readers.

(But let's point out that much of the invective that filled my inbox came from people outside North Carolina, nonreaders presumably, their ire ginned up by bloggers. And about that "fish sandwich," no, it was not a deliberate slur of the lacrosse players' religion, as some readers have inferred, Saunders said: "In my world, a fish sandwich is a good thing. I had no idea of the connection to Catholicism.")

7:57We read it as he (Gustafson) perhaps explained it (since we don't have the whole text of his explication du jour.)

Holloway sees everything about this case "through a metric of race and gender." This does not improve her comment about "guilt." It only explains the chief motive of the 88: to interpret everything through the poisonous stew of racialism and sexualism.

They seem to think that this indemnifies them in their crusade to castrate three innocent young men, but it means that they would - as in other generations - sacrifice babes to Molech (as long as "Molech" could somehow see things their way, through the same lens of race and gender.)

"For those who believed the lacrosse case was over, the past two weeks brought news on two fronts. First, Brendan Sullivan and Barry Scheck, on behalf of the three falsely accused players and their families, presented representatives of the City of Durham with the outlines of a devastating potential lawsuit against the city, former DA Mike Nifong, several police officers, and other individual defendants. The initial demands: $30 million, plus a wide array of procedural reforms, unless the city caves in and settles.Second, after acting DA Jim Hardin urged a state criminal investigation of Nifong and others, reports surfaced that Justice Department investigators had arrived in the Triangle to look into the case.

Meanwhile, we have learned, Duke, its administrators, and its extremist professors are not out of the legal woods yet either. The University settled months ago with the three falsely accused players. But now a high-powered legal team representing most of the other 44 members of the 2006 lacrosse team is exploring a possible lawsuit. The grounds would include mistreating the entire team, including misleading smears of the players by Duke President Richard Brodhead and dozens of professors."

...My Duke Magazine arrived today....Here's a direct quote from Dr. Gustafson, in his letter to the editor on page 7. Regarding the intentionally misread "white innocence" equation, it seems Dr. Gustafson at least has a fair and balanced view of what Holloway wrote:..."Dr. Holloway, in her article, did not herself set forth the equations above but discussed how many in society viewed the case, stating that '...innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender.' ...An important part of that examination [of the myriad complex issues that the last year and more have (re)illuminated] will be to focus on what people actually said or wrote rather than others' interpretations thereof, and so I am glad to have the opportunity to make the clarifications above."...Dr. Gustafson also acknowledges in this letter that the wording of [his] weblog on Dr. Lubiano also needed clarification. And he has the courage of character to make that clarification. A courage woefully lacking in the thread today.If Dr. Gustafson has the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the misreading the rest of you insist upon does that make him a ... communist? Or does it point out your failure to bring a similar integrity to your postings--whether you support the left or right of this debate?::Are you talking about the following Holloway quote?

"In nearly every social context that emerged following the team's crude conduct, innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender. White innocence means black guilt. Men's innocence means women's guilt. These capacious categories, which were in absolute play the night of the team's drunken debacle, continue their hold on the campus and the Durham community."

If so, she mentioned 'crude conduct' and 'drunken debacle' and then suggested that the concept of men's innocence means women's guilt ...continue their hold on the campus and the Durham community.

She was shamefully wrong on all counts and I don't need Gustafson to tell me that he can pick up this crap from the clean end.

The Attorney General of the State of North Carolina declared the young men innocent. He made no mention of men - women - black - white - Duke or Durham. Just innocent.

And...what's up with your use of the term 'integrity' over and over. What does integrity mean to you?::GP

Daniel Silva has a series of books on an Israel Agent and Sharon. Sharon is a hero and I pray for him to have peace. Now those 18 year old Israeli soldiers know what lost of innocence is all about. None the less, they fight on for their country.

I sure hope the rest of the team is suing Duke University. I do not think Durham cares at all about changing any practices for Sheck and Sullivan, but the BOT and Duke is a different story. I can not believe that the high powered folk on the BOT will ever let something like this happen again. Glad to see Deleware State took action to protect its students today.

Debrah, you do TOO have a gluteus minimus - (unless you are a mutant, which you are not.) And as there really is a gluteus maximus, and it's supplied by the inferior gluteal nerve, there is also a gluteus minimus and a gluteus medius, both supplied by the superior gluteal nerve (which also supplies the tensor fascia lata muscle.) The minimus and medius are abductors of the thigh; the gluteus maximus is primarily an extensor.

True story:A friend of mine was infatuated with the character Maximus, and signed his emails "Maximus." His name is Emmett. I emailed him back:

"Dear Emeritus,I know Maximus. Everyone knows Maximus. But most people don't know that he has two brothers, Medius and Minimus. Minimus is the deeper and more diminutive of the two, and Medius is a known abductor. In my opinion, they are all just plain asses!"

Not sure which one Karla and Wahneema are, but I'm sure they're squeezed in there, somehow, cheek-to-cheek!

(BTW, Debrah, I do work on these muscles, but I am not offering my services.) Take good care of the sacral ligaments! Might be a ligament sprain, as well as a muscle strain.

Nifong could be called a gluteus maximus maximus, as well as a number of other structures, some of which are supplied by the pudendal nerve. Especially the rectal branch.

"I can not believe that the high powered folk on the BOT will ever let something like this happen again"

The BOT has not emitted a peep of criticism of the 88.

The BOT have billions of dollars which they are willing to use to cover up wrongdoing.

Once the leaders of Durham finally get their finger out and realize that the plaintiffs' claims are open and shut and that the only decision for them to make is if they want a trial before they write the check, they are going to point the finger at Levicy (and Duke's billions) for having mislead poor Durham into believing there was a rape, thereby causing the whole mess. And Duke won't even fight it.

To vote against Mike Nifong. To make the oldest “X,” the sign of the white male franchise, itself overridden with the mark of privilege, oppression, slavery, racism, utter contempt for black and native bodies. [emphasis added] To make that sign in the history of this country, to extend into the presence the deeply troubled past, to make the “X”—whether it is acknowledged as such or not—against women and, more specifically, against black female bodies.

**********************************************

These words above by the zany 88 offshoot Grant Farred are truly disgusting. He has the mentality of someone from the early 20th century.

IMO, many of these professors "secretly" wish for that time again when all their molded and whipped-up fantasies of victimhood would have had a more trusting audience.

Think about this: Look at how many outlandish diatribes that were prominently displayed on the editorial page of Ashley's H-S.

Grant FarredOrin StarnEarl HoltHouston BakerThug

How many more? I'm sure they were in bed with the 88 all through the case.

Not to mention their horrific editorials.

Ashley definitely needs to be named in any suit brought by the lacrosse players.

What Prof. Gustafson, who has more integrity in his left pinky than the entire 88, should have said:

"Dr. Holloway, in her article, did not herself set forth the equations above but projected her own malevolencies upon society, stating that '...innocence and guilt have been assessed through a metric of race and gender.' ...

In fact, if Gustafson read this, I'm sure he would agree with it, at least privately.

And for debrah, when I think of diva/h, I think only of Tina or you. She sort of gave lie to what the drill sergeants told me about "big-legged women" back when I was 17. :)

I am sure the BOt has an action plan to prevent Professors, etc from making an error like this again. They would not be sharing it with the riff raft.The rape kit report showed no evidence of a rape. That is all that counts. Durham is not pointing a finger at the nurse. I would bet the house on that.

Taylor and Johnson make a pretty good prima facie case of Levicy making misleading statements and adapting her story to changing circumstances. She made those statements to Durham city police officials. Other officials quoted her contemporaneously as prosecutorial justification. It will eventually dawn on Durham to point that finger. And Duke won't even fight it - it's only thirty million. I'm sure the BOT's grandiosity will cover and, anyway, it'll be secret (no riff-raff).

Judge Rufus Peckham @1:19 AM said...Parents need to stop enabling these morons to hurt your sons by refusing to pay that hefty tuition. Get your boys the hell out of those terrible, terrible places.

Which is exactly what the 88 et al want.

Scott said...That humans are completely responsible for global warming and switching to hybrid cars and using flourescent lightbulbs will make a difference is even a topic of discussion (after millions of years of temperature variations, some of them even ocurring before the internal combustion engine was invented) indicates that any day now, someone is going to declare that "e" does not equal "mc squared" and that Newton's ideas about gravity were really the result of the white man's domination of dark-skinned men and women of every description.

Postmodernism disrobed by Richard Dawkins reviewing Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont...The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a "rape manual"), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Why? Because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us" (my emphasis of what I am rapidly coming to learn is an 'in' word). Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray's thesis on fluid mechanics. Fluids, you see, have been unfairly neglected. "Masculine physics" privileges rigid, solid things. Her American expositor Katherine Hayles made the mistake of re-expressing Irigaray's thoughts in (comparatively) clear language. For once, we get a reasonably unobstructed look at the emperor and, yes, he has no clothes:

"The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders."

You do not have to be a physicist to smell out the daffy absurdity of this kind of argument (the tone of it has become all too familiar), but it helps to have Sokal and Bricmont on hand to tell us the real reason why turbulent flow is a hard problem: the Navier-Stokes equations are difficult to solve.

@DebrahSorry to hear about your injury. You must find a scape goat. Can you remember who was the nearest male at the time of your accident?

That is one of the problems - we do not know what questions or statements were put to her. We have never seen the interviews or any "statements." BTW, Who made the statements? The question put to her at the bar hearing were only about the rape report - benign actually. The only record we have is the Bar hearing -

Hmm, what can I write that will keep this on-subject - let me see - Nifong bad! Oh my, that's been said before. Uh, Brodhead weak. No, been there... I know - Mangum not right! There. The entire case summed up. Phew - that was work!

Whoever this anonymous person is, they have made it their mission to post incorrect/slanderous information about me wherever they can online without sharing their own identity. By giving my name (Christina Headrick), my business, etc. online, and by trying to define my character in such a narrow, wrong way, I find it ironic that the poster is doing EXACTLY the same thing for which he/she accuses me of doing in relation to this case. What a hateful hypocrite...

For starters, I didn't attend this "potbanging" protest. Second, I didn't "make the names of every player available to every Durham psychopath" as some anonymous poster has described on various sites/blogs. The information that this person refers to was Duke's own information about the team, published on the university's own internet site, and available to anyone (including the media and many other websites/blogs that linked to or published the info from Duke). The information was cross posted along a variety of community bulletin boards discussing the case and I forwarded one of the e-mails with the Duke info to a discussion group after it came to me from someone else. Every single team at Duke has this information posted.

Yes, I participated in a community discussion about this case, which was a miscarriage of justice ultimately for the accused lacrosse players. The initial allegations were shocking, and I reacted to them... I believed the police, the DA, and the victim initially - and called out anonymous posters who made rude/hateful remarks on our neighborhood discussion group to identify themselves. Now I wish I had not participated in any of the discussions, especially given some of the truly threatening e-mails I have received from racist/sexist nuts. The whole thing has really taught me much about the country we live in.

I certainly regret participating in idle chatter about the details of the case, but I also encouraged groups discussing the case to try to make the discussion about various community issues (and not focus so much on the facts and controversies of the accusations involved).

I also commented as media coverage continued about the case that it seemed the DA had very little evidence and that the way the case was proceeding gave me a very bad feeling. At that point, I left the discussions about it, especially since it appeared that there would be nothing to come of them that in anyway helped address any broader community concerns.

Previously, I had participated in a community coalition made up of neighborhood reps, students, Duke administrators, and others to craft a plan about how to reduce binge drinking and it's related problems -- which included sexual assault, rampant drunk driving, noise, public vomit/urination, and other issues in our community. When this case happened, there was already quite a bit of anger about the behavior of Duke students in our community and Duke had taken some steps to try to start addressing the problems.

To date, nothing good has come of anything involved with this case. Those of us who believed local authorities and erred on the side of believing a sexual assault victim (many of us because of our own experiences or relationships with survivors of sexual assault) have all been villified. Certainly the lacrosse players themselves have all gone through an extremely horrible time. And today a woman is probably even less likely to report an assault in Durham as a result of the tremendous backlash against these allegations that turned out to be false. Again, nothing good -- and certainly little sensitive discussion of any issues -- has come from this scandal. I'm not trying to "hide" behind anything as this anonymous poster continuously alleges here, there and everywhere online. I don't appreciate being threatened or slandered by anonymous jerks either.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review